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Oracle takes aim at .Net with Web services software
(IDG) -- Taking aim at Microsoft's .Net initiative, database giant Oracle unwrapped new products designed to help businesses offer applications and services over the Internet. "Our goal is very simply to become the desktop for e-businesses," Larry Ellison, Oracle's chairman and chief executive officer, said at a Monday press conference held near the company's headquarters in Redwood Shores, California. The event was also broadcast over the Internet. Central to Oracle's announcements is Oracle 9i Dynamic Services, a framework that builds on Oracle's 9i database products and allows companies to create Web pages that incorporate a variety of content, including corporate data such as e-mail and sales figures, along with services like currency converters, language translators and shipping services. Oracle also announced Portal.Oracle.com, an online destination where businesses will be able to build and configure their Web sites -- or "business portals" -- using Oracle's software. Oracle will also offer to host those Web sites on its own servers, officials said at the press conference.
At the Portal.Oracle.com site, customers will be able to select prebuilt "portlets" to create applications for business intelligence, calendaring and scheduling, as well as syndicated content such as news and travel information. Oracle officials described portlets as pieces of prebuilt code that can be integrated into a business Web site. Oracle also announced that it has revamped its Online Technology Network (OTN), a resource for developers, to create a Web-based environment where programmers can build and deploy portal applications online. The site includes two new tools that will be available at no charge -- Oracle Portal Online Studio, for creating portals, and OracleMobile Online Studio, for building wireless applications. The company's efforts reflect a growing trend in the computer industry towards offering software and services over the Internet that can be accessed from all types of devices ranging from PCs to handheld computers. The idea is to help companies cut down on the cost of installing, managing and upgrading the software on their own computers and, at the same time, allow users to access their data from any computer fitted with a Web browser. Oracle officials went to great pains to contrast their announcement with Microsoft's .Net initiative, a comparable effort launched earlier this year that aims to provide software and services for Web-based computing. Microsoft has said it will roll out .Net products gradually in the coming years, and Oracle officials Monday repeatedly tried to portray Microsoft as being tardy in its efforts. ".Net is all about delivering a bunch of products in about two years time in order to allow people to go and build services," said Mark Jarvis, an Oracle senior vice president. "That's not what this is about at all. This is about delivering a bunch of services now in order to deliver services -- .Now." A Microsoft spokesman countered that Oracle's efforts are merely an endorsement of similar initiatives already underway in the industry. Along with Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard Co. has also been touting software for sharing services and information over the Web. Hosting a Web site at Portal.Oracle.com will be free for the first three months, Oracle officials said. After that, businesses will be required to pay $100 per gigabyte per month, regardless of how many users access the site. Oracle plans to make money from the effort by charging for some of the services that it offers at the Web site, Ellison said. In addition, larger businesses who like the portal products may choose to deploy them internally. They would then have to pay Oracle a licensing fee, he added. Ellison acknowledged that selling the Web-based services model to customers -- and even to Oracle's own sales force -- might take some work. Trying to position Oracle as a leader in the field, he said the long-term rewards of the transition will be worthwhile. "We're faced with the same problem Galileo had -- we're saying this is a new idea and this is right, and everyone else is saying Oracle is wrong," he said. Monday's move doesn't mean Oracle will take its eye off its mainstay database business. Oracle will continue to pursue that operation with as much gusto as ever, Ellison said. Oracle is due to report its second-quarter financial results Thursday and, without commenting on the results, Ellison hinted that the news would be good. "I slept fine over the weekend, so conclude what you like. We're going to have a great year," Ellison said. RELATED STORIES: Ellison: Oracle to team with Compaq on Net device RELATED IDG.net STORIES: Oracle readies tools for 9i database RELATED SITES: Oracle Corp. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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